The platform presented by Prime Minister Edi Rama promises to track complaints and public works. The documents published so far show what it could improve, but also how much transparency depends on the information institutions are willing to provide.
In July, requests for documents on Zvërnec were still caught between partial responses, referrals to other authorities and administrative appeals. In an analysis for Citizens.al at the time, I described how institutions could follow the procedure without handing over the documents we were asking for. This is the concrete problem against which the government’s new promise of transparency should be measured.
On 1 November, Prime Minister Rama presented the functions of PasqyrAlbania, developed by the National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI). According to the presentation, citizens will be able to follow public investments, municipal decisions, their own applications and complaints, and consultations on draft acts.
Rama linked the initiative to reflection following the protests over Zvërnec. He said the platform would soon become accessible to the public. So we have a presentation of its functions and a rollout in progress, not yet a demonstrated result showing that the whole service works from beginning to end.
After watching the presentation, I was left wondering what this changes for a citizen waiting for an answer, requesting a document or challenging an institution’s decision. Will they find complete information, on time? Will they also be able to use this route to show that an institution, or the government itself, has acted wrongly?
What could the platform make easier?
Of course, bringing information together in one place has value. Citizens should not necessarily have to understand how responsibilities are divided between ministries, agencies and municipalities to find out who is dealing with their case. A page identifying the responsible institution, the deadline and the relevant document could shorten the search and make delays visible.
The public section of PasqyrAlbania already contains useful material. The local decisions archive allows users to search by municipality and download documents. During the 1 November check, for example, it was possible to open Vlorë municipal council decision no. 83, dated 27 August 2026. That is access to a specific act that readers can check for themselves.
In the public investments section, however, selecting Vlorë brought up a notice saying that projects would be published soon. Of course, this does not prove that the platform failed on the day it was presented. But it shows the gap between what is promised and what citizens, or we as journalists, will be able to see tomorrow: not everything.
Tracking an investment requires more than its name, a photograph and a description. We need the contract, the initial cost and any changes to it, the deadline, payments, progress on the works and the reasons for delays. Without these, citizens are told that a project exists, but have little opportunity to scrutinise how the money is being spent.
When is a complaint considered resolved?
The presentation described a notification mechanism triggered once the statutory deadline has passed, with the Agency for Dialogue and Co-governance following up on the complaint.
Rama himself distinguished between receiving a response and having a problem resolved. We are told that this distinction will also be maintained in the statistics the platform produces.
An institution can respond within the deadline without providing documents. This is what happens to me as a journalist in roughly 70–75% of cases. It may refer the request elsewhere or explain why it is rejecting it. In certain cases, a refusal may be lawful. For this reason, I do not think the number of responses alone can tell us about their quality, or how many problems have been properly resolved.
Citizens need to see what action has been taken, who made the decision and where they can challenge it. An institutional rating might help with this, rather like the reviews section on Google, for example. But it cannot replace the document or the right to appeal.
Intervention by the Agency for Dialogue and Co-governance already has a legal basis. Law no. 107/2021 empowers it to request information from institutions, scrutinise their administrative activity and mediate disputes with citizens. It also requires institutions to cooperate with the agency.
The new platform may make this intervention and process more visible and easier to follow. But I do not think the obligation to account for decisions begins with it.
For information requests, the obligation has existed for years. Law no. 119/2014 provides for access to information produced or held by public authorities and, as a rule, a response within ten working days. It also provides for an appeal to the Commissioner, a process that, in my experience, has mostly been bureaucratic and disappointing.
PasqyrAlbania is therefore being presented while a system for transparency and the right to information already exists. For what we are seeing today to actually work, it will have to make that right easier to exercise, without making it dependent on the government’s willingness to choose what it publishes. We have seen a similar attempt before: “Transparenca.al” in 2015, which lasted a little over a year.
What does the experience of Zvërnec show?
Part of Rama’s promise with PasqyrAlbania can already be assessed. “Flamingo Mirror”, launched on 3 October, is the component that claimed to make the Sazan and Zvërnec file public.
The government presented it as opening up official documentation, while explaining that the final project and environmental study would be added when they were submitted.
In his 9 October analysis for Citizens, Lorin Kadiu noted that some documents were duplicated while essential material remained pending. He also documented how minutes previously withheld by the Territorial Development Agency (AZHT) eventually appeared on the platform. So the obstacle had also been the provision of information, not just where to look for it.
A quick check today, 1 November, confirmed that the archive still had only 42 entries, four of them marked as pending, with no downloadable document. The published documents are useful for verification: they include minutes, decisions, correspondence and maps. But the number of entries in a catalogue does not measure how complete the file is.
On 1 November, the change log showed only the opening of the file on 3 October, with no later events published. This does not prove that the entire platform has remained unchanged, but the log does not tell us what has been added or changed.
For example, the document about the Sazan negotiating group’s meetings is a single page listing their dates and purposes. I obtained this document in February from the Albanian Investment Development Agency (AIDA), after a long effort involving repeated requests, when I analysed the true scale of the Sazan project for Citizens.al. Just as then, it still does not convey the parties’ positions, the reasoning behind the financial proposals and, above all, whether the ten meetings from January to October 2025 were held in person. In other words, was Asher Abehsera physically present at these meetings as a representative of Affinity Partners?
The deadline for negotiations with Atlantic Incubation, the named investor for Sazan, also remains unclear to the public. Clause 6 of Strategic Investment Committee decision no. 11, dated 30 December 2025, sets 120 working days from notification, with the possibility of another 120 working days by agreement between the parties. It is therefore not an open-ended extension.
But without a verified notification date and evidence of whether the further extension has been activated, its end date cannot be established. The decision gives general technical, procedural, legal and infrastructure-related reasons, without breaking down the specific obstacles and the time needed for each.
Meanwhile, Law no. 36/2026 has exempted from the general competitive procedure those tourist ports that form part of an investment granted strategic status by the Strategic Investment Committee (KIS). Their construction and operation are tied to that same strategic investor.
Another document, the National Environment Agency’s decision of 15 May, requires a detailed environmental impact assessment for the Zvërnec project. It identifies its location within a protected area and the risks that need to be examined. Publication helps readers understand that environmental issues form part of the official assessment. This is a decision requiring a more detailed study, not final environmental approval for the project.
The National Territorial Council’s minutes also require careful reading. They record conditional approvals and the revocation of an earlier permit. To understand what may legally be built today, the decisions, conditions, issuance acts and withdrawals or revocations must be read together with the site plans.
A short response on the platform cannot replace this documentary history.
Who scrutinises the official explanation?
The government has the right, but also the duty, to explain its decisions and respond to reporting it considers inaccurate. But a government-run website remains an official source, with its own selection and interpretation. Independent scrutiny requires others to have the material they need to compare and interpret those explanations against the facts and their context.
One example is the information page on amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure. It sets out the aims and benefits the government attributes to the changes. During the public check, there were no links to the bill’s text or the sources supporting its claims. A simple explanation is useful, but readers must also be able to consult the relevant provision.
There may be legal restrictions on publication. The Flamingo file itself refers to commercial confidentiality and documents still being drafted. What is needed is a specific explanation: which document is missing, why, on what legal basis and whether it could be published in part. That would make the exception open to scrutiny.
In September, Rama promised that citizens would be able to find the document, the evidence and the reason for a delay, with a record of changes also retained. This is a reasonable standard against which to measure PasqyrAlbania.
If the platform makes available material that can currently be obtained only through requests and appeals, it will have delivered a concrete improvement. If it mainly adds summaries and official responses while documents remain missing, citizens will be able to see the procedure more clearly, but will still lack the information they requested.
Citizens should obtain information from the institution responsible and have effective ways to challenge a refusal. These rights must work even without mediation by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Cover: AI editorial illustration based on images from the 1 November presentation and an early resort concept. Symbolic composition.